Where in the world are you thinking of?

A Fine Mess

U.S. airlines have been fined millions of dollars for maintenance violations in the past two years alone. Just how much risk do these lapses pose?

 During a routine pre-flight check of a 767 jet, a Continental mechanic discovers that a part of the landing gear assembly is missingand that the plane flew tens of thousands of miles in this condition during the previous two weeks. The FAA later proposes fining the airline $230,000.

 Following a flight from Minneapolis, a Delta A320 lands in Cancún with a panel in its tail fin hanging loose and missing all the screws needed to hold it in place. Maintenance workers tape the panel shut, and the aircraft is allowed to fly in what an FAA inspector later calls an "unairworthy" condition. The agency launches an investigation that was still pending at press time.

 During a nine-hour transatlantic flight, the pilot of an American 767 hears loud noises coming from the cargo hold but assumes it's the contents shifting. When the plane lands in Paris, he learns that the racket was caused by a hole several feet wide in the outer fuselage, under the cargo hold.

These incidentsall of which occurred within the last three yearswere severe enough to draw the attention of FAA watchdogs. In each case, the plane landed safely and the problem was fixed, and the airlines involved said that there was no serious threat to the safety of those on board.

The fact that nothing bad happened is hardly reassuring, however, and the question remains: How much danger do the maintenance lapses behind the recent string of hefty fines pose to passengers? "When we fine an airline or say a plane was in an unairworthy condition, that's pretty serious," says FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette. "It means that there's the potential for an incident and ultimately people could get hurt."

Fortunately, thanks to today's improved technology (see "A Fix on the Future," page 90) and pilot training, mechanical problems rarely result in accidents. Still, safety experts warn that incidents can suggest a broader problem, such as a lack of effective oversight, which could ultimately produce the conditions that might allow an accident to happen.

"One slip means you have raised the risk, but it's not [necessarily] an imminent failure," says John Goglia, a former member of the NTSB.

But sometimes it is. Take, for instance, the recent $7.5 million fine against Southwest Airlines for flying aircraft that, with tacit approval of some of its FAA minders, had missed required inspections for cracks, which were later found on a few planes.

While most of those cracks were small, metal fatigue on one of Southwest's older 737s did cause a pilot to make an emergency landing last year, when a foot-long gash opened up on a flight from Nashville to Baltimore, causing a loss of cabin pressure (no one was injured). A yearlong NTSB investigation concluded in August that the culprit was fatigue near the tail section, which, unlike the incident involving the American flight to Paris, had penetrated the aluminum skin of the jet in one 3-inch stretch.

The good news is that the FAA's and the aviation industry's response to such lapses is to improve maintenance standards to prevent such problems from happening again. The Southwest incident, for example, led the FAA earlier this year to order all airlines to step up their inspections for wear and tear, especially around the vulnerable section where the tail is joined to the fuselage. "We've taken aggressive measures," says Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins, explaining its stepped-up inspections in the wake of the incident.